As someone who has three kinds of anemia and sees a hematologist more frequently than my diabetes specialist I suggest the following: there are several iron related components in your blood, including (but not limited to) hematacrit, hemoglobin level, actual iron level, ferritin level, and oxygen-iron ratio. Your doctor needs to be more sepcific as to what he/she means when you were told that your iron was too low? You need to know if you should be taking an iron suplement, and which one. They are available both on the shelf, and in higher dosages directly from the pharmacist but without a prescription. I have been anemic my entire life and had iron shots when pregant. When I moved my new doctor didn't accept my complacency about my anemia and wanted to get at the root cause. That's when we found out that there was more than "iron-poor" blood problems.

My mom donates blood and when her iron is low they won't take it. So she swears by watermelon. It is a great source of iron that won't tend to make you constipated. Plus if you eat a lot of dark leafy greens like spinach, broccoli and kale, you can add iron to your diet.

I don't think it is directly linked to diabetes. However, if you have low iron in your blood you will likely have a falsely high A1c so you shouldn't be worrying too much if it is higher than it should be. Once you raise the level of iron in your blood then you can get it tested again and you will get a more accurate result.

The A1c doesn't measure blood glucose, it hemoglobin that are bonded with glucose and using the result relies on them having a uniform lifecycle of around 90-120 days. Anything that messes with the lifecycle or bonding action will mean the result will be off.

Giving blood close to an a1c will reduce it, sometimes by 1 or 2%, anemia will reduce it, heavy bleeding will reduce it, low iron levels will increase it and so will having a blood transfusion because the preservative they use contains a lot of glucose that bonds with the red blood cells.

Since hemoglobin is the part of the red blood cell that contains iron, having low levels of iron means that you have lower levels of hemoglobin which means that the result will be higher than it would if you had the correct balance. Medical texts that deal with the A1c say that you should not base any diagnostic or treatment decisions off an A1c when the patient has an iron deficiency. Or something like that!